Adventures in Logical Malfeasance

Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world. But just you wait Pilate because one day in a land called America my Kingdom will be manifested when my people become sufficiently politically active and seize the reins of civil power!" John 18:36 CNV (Contemporary Theonomy Version)

Doug Wilson has himself in something of a tizzy over the rather sudden if predictable and (in my eyes) proper groundswell of Christian leaders who are advocating a sudden divorce from Caesar over the issue of marriage, in essence taking our religious seal of approval and going home. This is somewhat awkward given Doug's apparent love affair with some sort of weird postmillenial theonomy or whatever he calls it where Christians who fail to be sufficiently activist in politics are letting down the team or something. Now Doug is a pretty bright guy and says some pretty deep and correct stuff on many occassions but on a regular basis goes completely off the rails. His post, TheYarn in the Public Sweater, is an example of the latter. Apparently even a guy who advocates stridently for smaller government and rails against the government in general simultaneously sees political libertarianism as a philosophy to be an existential threat and a forbidden system of thought for any real, red-blooded Christian. I thought I would do a little dissection of some choice sections for my amusement and yours. This is gonna be a long one....let's get started.

" So that which is a distinctively Christian political theory (i.e. a theocratic approach) resembles libertarianism in a number of striking ways. "

So the only possible distinctively Christian political theory is a theocratic one. That particular model of civil government has worked out pretty well in the past, hasn't it? As a reminder, here is a quick definition from our friends at Wiktionary on the word theocracy:

theocracy (plural theocracies)

1. Government under the control of a state-sponsored religion.
2. Rule by a god. 

As an interesting side note: " theo- +‎ -cracy, originally from Ancient Greek θεοκρατία (theokratía, “rule of (a) God”), a term coined in the 1st century by Josephus (Against Apion 2.17) in reference to the kingdom of Israel."

So having a theocracy means either direct rule by God (assuming monotheism) or a government run by a state-sponsored religion. The first (and only) example occurred in ancient Israel under the Old Covenant with kings and prophets through whom God directly directed the affairs of His people. Of course Hebrews 1: 1-2 speaks of the office of prophet as God's chosen spokesmen in the past tense and I have found that any contemporary religious figure who claims a unique prophetic authority and mantle to speak for God to universally be a crank, crackpot, heretic or some combination thereof. So that leaves us with government under the control of a state sponsored religion. Now we have a new problem: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ". Oopsie. There is also part deux of the problem, namely that theocracy even in Israel didn't exactly turn out well as a theocracy made up of believers and unbelievers inevitably went haywire, something that subsequent attempts at theocracy have substantiated.

"In other words, a consistent Christian political theory is not libertarian, but it will in fact be accused by statists (including those Christians compromised by the idolatries of statism) of being libertarian. Just as a preacher who preaches free grace will never be antinomian, so a Christian political theorist will never be an anarchist or a libertarian. But it is equally true that any preacher worth his salt who preaches free grace will be accused of antinomianism (Rom. 6:1). It is the same kind of thing here."

So Christian political theory (a confusing and problematic term in and of itself) looks like libertarianism, talks like libertarianism, is often mistaken for libertarianism and indeed will be accused of being libertarianism but it of course never can be libertarianism because....marriage and divorce. Confused yet? If you aren't, you aren't paying attention. Keep going....

"So for the Christian political theorist, the integration point of all things is Jesus Christ Himself (Col. 1:18). Christ is the center, and must be the center. He cannot be the one before whom every knee bows and every tongue confesses, while at the same time being kept in the shadows. He is the integration point of all things, and cannot be the secret integration point. We must confess Christ, and we must do so in our collective capacity as a civil order. The Great Commission said to disciple all the nations, and this includes the Americans."

We are sorta OK here up to the point where Wilson assumes the false dichotomy of either subscribing to theocracy or keeping Christ in the shadows. Is there no other way? Preaching Christ to the lost, feeding the poor, visiting the widow, caring for the orphan, loving our brother. Are all of these only possible or only legitimate or even more likely in a theocracy? Hardly. I mean this line: "We must confess Christ, and we must do so in our collective capacity as a civil order." is so divorced from any Biblical foundation that is boggles the mind that someone who studies as seriously as Wilson can think it does.

I am going to skip the middle but feel free to read it because once again Wilson seems to base his argument on why the church needs to stay in the civil marriage business because we need to have someone to force the parties in divorce to do so amicably and to use the sword to make deadbeat dads pay child-support. No, I am being serious, go ahead and read it. Maybe it is just too intellectually high-falutin' for a fella from Indiana or maybe it is just a dumb argument. I did want to point out one part here that I found interesting, although the example of an ex-husband who won't leave the house and who should make him just weird ( emphasis mine):

"The answer ought not to be friends and family of the ex-wife, because that would be spiraling downward into tribalism. He has friends and family also, and they have guns too. The answer ought not to be the church, because the church is not authorized by Christ to use force. When force is necessary, the civil magistrate is the one who bears the sword, and he bears the sword so that recalcitrant ex-husbands will agree to leave the house (Rom. 13:4)."

Quite right at least in that one part, the church is not authorized to use force and bear the sword. I wish he would flesh that out because the thing about a theocracy is that in order to keep the heathen in line, the church (which is the state and vice versa) by definition will have to use the sword and that is forbidden so we have a quandary don't we? If the church and state are one then the state is necessarily taking on those things that are reserved for the church and the church is taking on things that are reserved for the state and in fact are forbidden for the church. This is a glaring logical conundrum that he just skips over. We continue.....

"But coercion is always a big deal, and those who are entrusted with coercive powers must always be required to use those powers of coercion sparingly and justly."

Sure. But. Show me an example anywhere, anytime in human history when this has occurred at any scale. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely and all of that. Here we see the continuation of Wilson's enormous logical conundrum. How do we have a government composed of nothing but Christians in a mixed society that is at the same time a free one? Will not those who are not Christians inherently be less free? More....

"A free republic, with every man under his own fig tree, is not going to come until a free republic arises in the hearts of the citizenry. And that means Jesus. A free society will be one where the populace streams to churches every Lord’s Day in order to worship the Father, through Jesus, in the power of the Spirit. In big cities, there will be extra traffic helicopters out, telling the Presbyterians that they had better take Exit 28A if they want to make it on time."

Guess what Doug, that is never going to happen and even in times and places when everyone did "go to church" it was hardly a just and equitable society. In fact throughout much of Western civilization up until recent time people were compelled by force or by cultural pressure (blue laws, etc.) to "stream to church every Lord's Day" while during the rest of  the week going to war with other people who also "stream to church every Lord's Day" or enslaving people for profit or persecuting those who dared dissent from the cultural religious orthodoxy. Notice we have that use of coercion again and it was abusive and counter-productive. See a pattern here?

"More discussion is needed on this last point, I understand, but I trust the marriage issue is settled (at least for Christians)."

Well there we have it again. Doug has declared from his Protestant seat of Peter in Idaho what the only possible Christian response can be. All that remains now is to kiss his ring. Sorry to say but like many men before me I am afraid that I don't render the required obsequiousness to Doug on this matter. So that was snarky but wow what a pompous statement to make in closing an incredibly weak argument with holes in his logic you could fly a zeppelin through sideways.

All snarkiness aside, this sort of religious political eisegesis combined with sweeping generalizations and thinly veiled accusations is a serious distraction to the mission of the church which has nothing to do with seizing power and forcing the unregenerate to act like they are regenerate. To argue that the most compelling reason for the church to continue to serve as an agent of Caesar in officiating civil marriage is that we need someone to bring down the hammer when couples split and we aren't able to do it is the weakest argument I have come across on any topic in a very long time. More thoughts.....

In Romans 12 and 13 we have two sides of the same coin at play. On one side we have the church, called to be peacemakers who do not seek vengeance and leave the resolution of injustice to the Lord, overcoming evil not by conquering evil and bending it to do our will but by overcoming evil with good. On the other we have a call to submit to Caesar who has received authority from God including the authority to use the sword. It is important to note for the ten thousandth time what is not found in Romans 13. One, there is no call for Christians to cooperate and participate with Caesar, just to submit to and not rebel against him even when that would be the natural response. In fact history has taught us the painful lesson that it is nigh impossible and certainly unwise for the church to try to cooperate with Caesar, a far more pertinent application of 2 Corinthians 6:14 than marrying unbelievers (which is also unwise and for the same reason as the church trying to be buddies with Caesar). Second, there is not a clause in Romans 13 implying that it only applies when the Caesar or Caesar-esque stand-in is a just one. You cannot divorce the reading of Romans 13 with the setting and audience of Romans 13. It was not written for, at least not exclusively for, Americans living in the 1950's where everyone went to church and was nice to each other (except blacks but we don't talk about that). It was written to the church in Rome under the rule of Caesar, an oppressive government where public crucifixions were part of the criminal justice system. There would arguably not be an even semi-just, liberal (in the classical sense, not the modern theft funded state that murders babies sense) Caesar/state for more than a millennium so if the assumed clause was there most of the church would have missed it for a long time.

The sort of theocratic society Doug pines for and in turn lambastes others for not embracing has not and never will exist on this side of the Resurrection and Judgment precisely because the only One who could make that happen, Christ Jesus the Lord, has not ordained it to be so. It is amazing that people who talk so glowingly of sovereignty when it comes to soteriology in the abstract seem to be practical Arminians when it comes to social issues. God helps those who help themselves go to the ballot box and etc. I trust that God's will is being done even with a miscreant and wannabe tyrant like our current President in the Oval Office. God handles the "big picture", we are called to the simpler tasks because we are barely capable of doing those and generally have failed anyway.

Jesus taught that His Kingdom was not of this world, that His people are strangers and sojourners in this world, that we are citizens of His Kingdom and ambassadors to the unbelieving world, that we are wheat among the tares. It is a tension to be sure but a necessary and intentional one. Had Christ chosen to do so He could have come in power and ruled the world by force, either in Person or through a designated mediatorial ruler. Instead He founded His church among the outcasts, the powerless, the foolish of the world. We should not ignore that inconvenient setting as a historical anomaly but rather as a very intentional act on the part of God.

We do not have, never have had and never will have the numbers to live in an idyllic Christian theocracy and that is kind of the point. We operate in the Gospel from a stance of weakness, of foolishness. We represent Christ not by standing in the halls of power but by kneeling at the feet of others, not with the sword or the Presidential pen but with the towel and basin. Paul taught it well when he wrote:

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor 12:9-10)

It is nigh impossible to reconcile calls for seizing earthly power in a misguided and doomed desire to coerce what Christ alone can provide. If we are strongest when we are weak then it follows that the opposite is true and we are weakest when we think we are strong. Wilson's argument fails in the same way that a lot of libertarian thought fails, namely that it operates in a theoretical model divorced from messy reality. The difference is that when Doug Wilson makes his claims he drags the church into it and in doing so threatens to distract an already highly distracted church from our actual mission which has nothing to do with being yoked to Caesar so he will pummel dead beat dads. 

The dangerous world of dominionism

I mentioned a while ago that I have been thinking more about dominion theology or Christian reconstruction or theonomy or whatever you call it. It is a tough thing to pin down because there are so many variations on it. It is doubly hard because almost no one accepts being called a dominionist and a huge percentage of American Christians are infected to one extent or another by a certain amount of dominionist thinking. It is just such a common attitude in the church that it is hard to avoid. Some dominionist thinking is overt but a lot of it is more subtle and manifests itself in talk of restoring America as a Christian nation or other similar attitudes.

What is especially troubling, to me at least, is that there are some places where dominionists often hold positions that are at least superficially the same as positions I and many other Christians hold as well. Homeschooling is an area of common ground although the underlying philosophy is quite different. Calvinism is common among Christian Reconstructionists. By and large they are sober, serious about the Bible and generally people that I would be comfortable hanging around with in most settings. The same is true of many other fellow believers. Because of that there is a real danger of getting some decent information lumped in with some really, really bad information.

A primary example comes from an essay on the webpage of American Vision, an organization devoted to a mission to "Restore America to its Biblical Foundation—from Genesis to Revelation.". That phrase resonates with a lot of American Christians who see America as a specially blessed and chosen land founded as a "Judeo-Christian nation" that has gone astray from its alleged Biblical roots. American Vision has lots of meaty articles right in the wheelhouse of conservative American Christians. Lots of stuff railing against government, taxes, immorality and liberalism in general. Unfortunately it also frequently features essays like Amish Presbyterians: PINO, a not so clever shot suggesting that any Presbyterian that doesn't embrace militarism and American exceptionalism is little different from the Amish. That apparently is supposed to be an insult since the author describes the Amish as "parasites", which doesn't seem to jive with what I know of them.

Anyhoo, the author, Bojidar Marinov, a self-described missionary to his home country of Bulgaria, is responding to an anonymous Presbyterian (called simply "K") who has the temerity to question militarism.

K.’s life, liberty, and property today are well protected, and he doesn’t have to fight every day for the right to keep what’s his own. He can afford that because even today America still maintains a certain form of that original consensus, that the sword must be used ACCORDING TO THE GOSPEL in order to preserve the social order in our land. Even today there are still Christian men who are not reluctant to pull a trigger in obedience to Christ. Even today there are still sheriffs and judges who believe in the original mandate handed down to us from those early Presbyterian ministers who enjoined public servants to serve as unto the Lord. K. enjoys the fruit of their beliefs, their courage, and their labor; and then he has pious “concerns” about the theology that gives moral justification to those beliefs, courage, and labor.

The sword is just a tool. And like every tool in human hands, the sword — or the musket, or the surgical scalpel, or the M-16 — preaches some “gospel.” What “gospel” it preaches depends on what use it is put to. It can preach the Gospel of Christ by fighting the British, or executing criminals, or shooting robbers. Or it can preach the “gospel” of death by torturing political enemies, or dismembering unborn children, or cutting the life support from a hospital patient, or burning a persecuted Christian family. The sword will always be there in any culture before the Final Judgment, and the sword will always preach some “gospel.” There is nothing magically or intrinsically bad about the sword. If a Christian doesn’t use it according to the Gospel, a pagan will use it against the Gospel.

Where to even begin. Preaching the Gospel of Christ by fighting the British? How exactly does one preach the Gospel when people are shooting one another, especially when presumably many involved on both sides are professing Christians? I get that Mr. Marinov is not a fully representative example of everyone who holds some sort of dominionist view but views like his have an outsized impact on the church.

There are several faulty assumptions here that are common among dominionist thinking such as...

1. God has intended the Old Covenant civil laws of national Israel to carry forward to secular nation-states that of necessity contain a mixture of New Covenant believers and unbelievers.
2. The Gospel calling and mandate includes not just preaching Christ to the lost but bringing nations under the rule of Christ here and now by force and killing if necessary.
3. Changing behavior is a mandate of Christians and enforcing those laws by the use of violence is permitted and perhaps even encouraged achieve that end.
4. Some nations, particularly America, are specially chosen under the New Covenant as "God's people" or at least as nations founded on "Judeo-Christian morality".

This is all dangerous stuff and it hampers the witness of the church around the world. God has people in every nation, among every tribe and speaking every tongue. There are no special nations no matter how much pious talk and vague religious language the founders of a nation incorporate into their founding documents. Nor is there anyway to read the New Testament and come away with a calling to conquer and have dominion by force. How far astray we have gone from a church that flourished in persecution and thrived in spite of that persecution under a reign of terror unlike anything any of us can imagine.

I like something John Piper wrote back in 1994, Dominion Theology or Reconstructionism:

The closer we get to Dominion Theology the closer we get to living by the sword. Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world my disciples would fight." This seems to mean that we are not moving toward a true understanding of the kingdom of God in this world as we move toward a greater and greater use of the sword to authorize kingdom values.

It is not the priests who are given the sword but the magistrates. And the magistrates rule not by virtue of their claim to revelation but by virtue of their claim to providential authorization. In some cultures this providential authorization has been through a line of kings, in other cultures through various contests, and in our own culture through a democratic representative process.

It seems that the theocratic ideal of Israel in the Old Testament was specifically abandoned in the New Testament as the Gospel ceased to be focused on an ethnic and political reality called Israel (Matt. 21:43) and became a multicultural, multiethnic worldwide movement without ethnic or political definition. It will be fitting, when Christ returns, that he be given the right to establish a kingdom of more specific political boundaries. But in the meantime we do well to exert our influence in ways that do not put the sword into the hands of the priests.

Piper is right on the mark here. We are all priests and none of us has been called to carry the sword or to conquer lands in the name of Christ or to establish theocratic nations that enforce the civil laws of Old Covenant national Israel. The church needs to recognize dominionism when it appears and stand against any hint of dominionism.